90 percent of all scientific articles are wrapped tightly behind paywalls, and buying a subscription that would give you access to a series of articles can cost you thousands of dollars per journal. I believe that knowledge should not be a commodity and science should not be a luxury. Access to knowledge should be a basic human right. Without the power of free, online access to scientific and scholarly research articles—a concept called “open access”—we are denied the most natural and efficient way that our society evolves: by building off each other’s ideas. If we are to have any hope of empowering the minds of young scientists to come up with new, creative solutions to the problems of the world, the fight to keep the flow of information free is one of our most important battles. The time has come to tear down this wall. Fortunately, at the time of this writing, there is a bipartisan bill called the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (or FASTR) that would require research articles funded by taxpayers to be made freely available online within six months.
